You are decades behind the times, Bonzo. You're a luvly feller in many regards but the world is changing. It's great to be trans, it's great to be a feminist, it's great to oppose pussy-grabbing, it's great to have me-too, it's great to bollock people who won't bake your same-sex wedding cake. Tell me: are you the sort of bloke who still thinks that gay means happy and carefree?

Firstly I think it's most interesting to be made to realise just how gender-stereotyped our language is. I've never considered this before, but our culture is, so it would seem, geared to accepting only two types of humans, and having a plethora of words/expressions to that end.

Secondly, I see no harm in modifying our vocabulary if this would make people who don't regard themselves as either 'male' or 'female' more comfortable. I wouldn't want to upset or exclude anyone by my choice of words.

Thirdly, language does evolve, but fairly slowly. This new idea may take quite some time to become accepted by society.

Lastly, there are those (like Bonzo, I assume) who find all this ridiculous and unnecessary. Obviously there will be voluble dissenters and scoffers. I'm all for it myself, but can understand the other point of view.

As someone who identifies as non-binary and has asked people to use They when referring to me in the third person...

I was sharing a cabin with a young person to whom I told this, and he was so fine with it he referred to me as They in the third person and I found myself wondering whom he was talking about! I almost jumped in and said No, that was me, when I realized what he had said.

Let's just celebrate humanity in all its multifarious guises. Nobody's forcing language on you. I come on here and use exactly the language I want to use. King Canute demonstrated to his local idiots that you can't turn back the tide. Language evolution is the ultimate democracy. Ultimate because, unlike lots of other things in democracies, it's free! A cat can look at a queen!

Not that much of a minority, since I believe a lot of us have problems with gender-based terminology. I think that's primarily what your problem is: not knowing where the hell your familiar, safe world went. You're adrift in a changing sea, and you're angry about it-not the best way to deal.

It is difficult to change language but change it must. Let me ask an open question to those dissenting. Why does it matter if we refer to someone as male or female? Surely it would be better for all of we freed ourselves from preconceived notions of what men and women can or cannot do and judged everyone on their own merits rather than on their gender?

Gnomes have always been gender free of course. Right down to our beards...

Who's imposing language on you? Nobody! When's the last time a cop (or one of Franco's goons - I've lost track of where you live) ever picked you up for your un-PC talk? Never! Claiming that language is forced on you is utter bullshit. It's an illusion resulting from the fact that you have still to migrate yourself out of the nineteenth century!

Using language that's acceptable, is very confusing to me. I try not to be offensive, but I'm a clumsy sort of person and get myself into awkward situations at times. As usual, I like Mrrzy's attitude and humor about such things.

Here in California, we have a law that decreed that all "one-holer" bathrooms are Unisex. To me, that seems absolutely sensible. If one restroom is occupied, why should I have to wait if the other one is open? Perhaps it may encourage business owners to provide one restroom in the future, not two; but for now, it's a great advancement.

The North Carolina legislature has done all kinds of legislative gymnastics to put transgender people in awkward positions when it comes to bathroom use. When I was visiting Dani and Janie and Amos in Hillsborough NC last fall, I noted that restaurant owners are waging a revolution of their own against the legislature, and declaring all restrooms Unisex, like we do in California. It sure felt nice to see the restaurant owners rebel against the bigots in the legislature.

I have no problem in theory with gender-neutral pronouns - my beef is that, where possible, we should avoid adding confusion to the language - which this new twist on the use of 'they' does. I wish some egg-heads who care about language for its own sake had been consulted; it wouldn't have been impossible to come up with a less problematic work-around. It looks like a fait accompli already, though .....

I find it interesting that Bonzo referred to "Some really aggressively obsessed cranky women", when the woman in the group who really stood out as "aggressively cranky" was the one taking the "Bonzo stance".

In many circumstances I find myself having to ditch my beloved construction, start afresh and build my sentence all over again. Sometimes, I read my posts back to myself and wish I'd done that more often. I'm a bit guilty of over-elaborating at times, but how hard it is to consign your beloved linguistic baby into the bin. So I have no patience with people who arrogantly declare that they are being somehow constricted in the way they can write by by the "demands" of disadvantaged minorities. Quite simply, they are not. Type whatever you like, Bonzo et al. It won't be the repressed and misunderstood minorities who shoot you down. It'll be me. And maybe Joe. Or Greg. Or Jim. Or Dave. All totally masculine testosterone-fuelled hulks to me knowledge. Or Jeri or Maggie. People with a balanced and a damn sight more modern and empathetic view of the diversity of humanity than the one you are celebrating.

Well, I dunno, meself. If I'm the one doing the talking, I'm the one choosing the words I speak. I was raised otherwise, so it's unlikely that I will ever get used to using "they" (a plural term) to refer to an individual person.

However, I have been quite adept for years at substituting gramatically-correct words that are not gender-specific - "One," "persons/people/humans," "we," "you" - and many more. I believe in that practice, and do it as often as I can.

But "they" to refer to a singular person? That makes me cringe. "They" are going to have to come up with something more gramatically elegant, something that flows a little better and doesn't sound like a Neil Diamond song....not that I can find the damn song when I'm looking for it.

But "between you and I," we know the songs I'm talking about:

Shinin in the sky For you and I Makes me wanna die...

And because of this, Neil Diamond songs are going to play in my head all night until I come across that song.

I'm old enough to remember when people called gay folk 'poofter' or 'pansy'. I can even remember black people being called 'nig-nogs'. It makes me cringe with shame even typing those words now, but back then it was nothing out of the ordinary. We've adapted our choice of words in order to be considerate of others' dignity and to respect one another. I would always want to be kind and aware of others' feelings. Therefore I'm happy to adapt my language to this end. It's just a bit complicated at first, but I'll get the hang of it I'm sure.

I'm with you - I'm going to have a tough time getting my head and tongue around 'they' as singular, in direct speech - and, yes, we do use 'they' as singular in casual speech in certain situations ("Someone was here, and they ate my porridge"), but it's a big jump from that to what is being mandated now. And no one is asking us ....

Once upon a time, like a century or two ago, were not the grammatically masculine pronouns accepted as having an inclusive sense? It seems that substituting "he/she" for "he" has only happened during my lifetime.

Four years ago, around the time I needed spinal surgery, my NHS back doctor always saw me just a few days after I rang for an appointment, and he did my operation about six weeks (which included an MRI) after I first went to him. I wasn't a particular emergency either. That was Mr Wafai at Barnstaple. Great bloke. Didn't cost me a bean. I suppose the Tories have had an extra four years since then to carry on wrecking the NHS.

A couple of generations ago homosexuality was dismissed as an aberration and sodomy prosecuted when discovered. We now live in a more "enlightened age?" where being gay is nothing more than a label(to most) Probably in another 50 years gender issues will no longer cause any kind of controversy. I wonder how it will all be resolved in mixed jails and the military?

The gender-neutral use of "they" and related words ("themselves," etc.) as singular has been part of the English language for 800 years and is completely unobjectionable. In common parlance it's far more popular than using just "he" for everybody, or clumsy constructions such as "he or she." And don't get me started on silly things like "s/he"!

There is an American craze that is creeping in over here in Contra Dancing. Larks and Ravens.

The problem being that old farts like me have is: to translate a call for Larks to Gent before we hear what us blokes is (sic) meant to do. And if it is a bloke bearing down on you is it (sic) a Lark (translate) Gentor a blokess dancing as a Larkor did I not see the raven haired Lark who looks like a Raven in the wrong place looking as confused as I am?

And must I dance in Waltz hold with a Man-Raven who is mentally turning as he would always turn?

Women dancing as men is confusing but at least they usually have it right in their head.

So Ladies and Gentleman, I will not have a way of speaking imposed on me by some microscopic minority. Do they (3rd person plural) honestly believe that they (3rd person plural) will impose their way of speaking, just because they (3rd person plural) can't make up their minds from day to day whether they (3rd person plural) are male or female????

100 years ago if you mentioned the idea of gay marriage you would likely end up in bedlam. Difficult to be emphatic when trying to describe the mores of the future. Can't even predict the weather or election outcomes with any accuracy.

I try to imagine myself in the shoes of LGBT folk. It must be very difficult for them, navigating through today's world and facing stereotyping and prejudice. Being referred to as one thing while knowing those epithets don't apply is upsetting. If changing the odd word here and there makes them more comfortable, what's the problem?

Joe Offer and I were exchanging PM's recently about the bothersome word "binary."

I mean, it isn't a bit bothersome in a data-processing context, "binary." As long as we're talking about computers, machine language, Base Two maths, and strings of zeroes and ones, "binary" fits right in.

Then I am confronted with my fellow human beings describing each other, describing themselves, as "binary" or "non-binary", and I go, HEY, are we talking about humans or computers??

How about born-again Christian gender-neutral homeopathy-loving vegan organic sackcloth-wearing biodynamic gardeners? You OK with them? What if they only eat muesli with soya milk? Does that make a difference?

I'm not much of a muesli cruncher. Gimme a bowl of porridge or Weetabix any day. Trouble with Weetabix is that you need a ton of milk for just three of 'em. I tried to beat the issue by using less milk and eating fast before they turned to sludge, then I realised that they were then probably soaking up all my body fluids instead...

Will Fly, as a US native, my question would be "When?" because "Hey, you guys!" has been around for generations. A group of girlfriends do not think twice about grabbing each other's attention by hollering, "Hey, you guys! You guys! Look at this..."

If I were going to investigate the When question, where would I look? I would look to literature and journalism.

Solidly in place, this turn of phrase, throughout the 20th Century in the US, it appears to me. Maybe if I looked closer at the era of World War One, or at the turn of the century, I would locate a generation of journalists and writers who shrank from "You guys" and found it a vulgar colloquialism, but yes, it must go back nearly a hundred years.

""Hey, you guys..." "fellers" and "lads" is still very common in Ireland when aimed at men, women or both I'd have thought that the events regarding treatment of women, particularly unequal payment and the Dorchester predators should have been enough for even Bozo to get his head around the fact that 'Something's gotta give' eventually What more does it take, for cryin' out loud, a return to the ducking stool and the branque?? Jim Carroll

"I've always been amused when in US tv shows, somebody walks in to a group of men and women and says, "Hey, you guys..." Where did that come from?"

English used to distinguish 2nd person singular and plural as "thou/you." But like French, it also used the plural form as an honorific. This gradually generalized as a generally polite form, except among Quakers, so "thou" became obsolete, and the singular/plural distinction was lost.

In Southern American English, "you" became the singular form and "you all" or "y'all" became the plural. In mid-Atlantic dialects, "you 'uns" is the plural form. (Although that is sometimes used as the general form, and "you ' unses" a new plural.)

In dialects without these resources, "you guys" is the gender-neutral second person plural.

In my (long) life, language has changed amazingly. I don't much mind the changes. 'Guys' is just a fashion; it will be something else soon. Remember 'fab'? Everything was 'fab' in the Sixties. You never hear it now.

Another strange word use is 'like' as in "I was like..." followed by some direct speech. Fascinating!

My favourite is 'innit?' But even that is fading away.

One only has to re-read the Famous Five books (in their original form) for a good laugh at how people spoke sixty years ago.

In Canada, "you guys" including females or completely females emerged only during my lifetime; in fact, I've only been hearing it since the early or mid- 1990s, I'd say. That's not to say you wouldn't be able to find earlier examples, but it wasn't common before then. I still 'notice' it, because I was far into adulthood before I heard it used that way. And I've never heard "this guy" referring to a female. In the singular, it's still understood to indicate a male, always.

I find it ironic that just as the gender-neutral (supposedly, anyway) 'man' and 'he' became pretty well eliminated from the language, the new gender-neutral 'guys' appeared. To some extent, language will find its own way.

There is a great bit in an Asterix when Julius Caesar, who always refers to himself in the third person, says something self-aggrandizing. A roman says, He is great! Julius Caesar says, Who? Roman: Well, um... you! Caesar: Oh, him!

This is, since I read the article about "whose monkey is it" in leadership school, my philosophy: figure out whose problem it is.

If it's yours, do something about it. If it's somebody else's, you can choose to help, but it's THEIR thing to deal with.

If your language gets you into trouble, either try to do better, or realize you're going to get shit about it until you try to do better. You have no control over anybody else. About the only thing you can do about it is bitch on an internet forum, where you can do something about it, or learn to live with people telling you you're messed up (in which case, you can bitch about that on an internet forum).

In Jewish services there has been a change over the past ten years where prayers refer not only to the standard (three) forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but to the (four)foremothers: Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel. (No one makes a big deal about one of the forefathers marrying two of the fourmothers). BUT: It makes it hard for us growing oldsters who grew up with prayers that were intoned as part of a chant, 'cause now we have to interpose a bunch more syl-a'-bles into the mix. Turns out that while my conscious mind is very amenable to giving credit to the mothers, my metric side is a bit more conservative about changing meters.

Wonder if it's a left-brain right-brain thing? Never gave it much thought before.

I believe the proper term for somewhat de-testosteroned males is 'metrosexual'. There were some South Park episodes about the subject quite a few years ago, now, so this is not really a 'new' thang.

Language is about communication and English is reckoned to be 50% redundant. For good reason. In a difficult (noisy) environ - missing words - we can re-construct the meaning and most likely get it about right first time. When describing a group/crowd, gender is part of the description.

The modern way of (say) using actor instead of actress is removing information. "The actress on the left" reduces the possibilities. In the same way we might say "in the green dress" (which these days at UK Folk Dances doesn't imply gender per se)

And the actor/actress thing is driven by the performers - who perform to an audience and it is the audience who are important. Without them - actor/actress - well - aren't. But who can ignore the tide of fashion?

"Hey, you guys..." I can accept if the group are mixed. "you fellas" if all male, "you gals" if all female. That is clear communication. Or Plain English as in another modern fashion (where found).

Your post robomatic really made me think. I was brought up on the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the King James bible at church. The words of both were burned into my brain since early childhood and I absolutely love them. They have a poetry, elegance and rhythm which carry one along beautifully. But when the Common Worship, and Alternative books were introduced, I (and many others) was horrified. It just didn't feel the same. It jarred. I felt angry and rebellious (not good feelings when participating in a religious service!) This in turn has given me an insight into Bonzo's objections. I see now Bonzo why you feel affronted. Perhaps we cling to our old, familiar word patterns and become uneasy with change. Most interesting.

Aha the King James Bible, great stuff whether you believe in it or not. I agree 100% about the Common Worship and Alternative books - trendy and incomplete - just like all this "non-binary" nonsense, reminds me of the grotesque Boy George and his entourage of cranks!

"The modern way of (say) using actor instead of actress is removing information."

Absolute sexist nonsense. We have brains that are perfectly capable of processing contextual information. You may be looking at a photo, you may have her name, you may know the part she's playing. I promise you that you'll never have to work very hard to decide the gender of the actor. The word actress has been proscribed by the Guardian style guide for many years now. When I'm reading cast lists or film reviews or the like I never find the loss of the unloved "actress" a source of difficulty.

Another thing. The word "actor" ends with two letters of the word "more." The word "actress" ends with three letters of the word "less." That in itself is repulsive enough for me.

"Conductress," Bonzo? Well I caught buses to school from Radcliffe to Bolton and back for seven years. I rode the buses in London and the West Midlands for years. Of course, there aren't many actual conductors left any more. But, when there were, as there were in those days, there were plenty of women doing the job. And I never heard anybody calling them "bus conductresses," not once. If you really needed to point to the fact that the person selling you the ticket and bollocking you for smoking underage on the upstairs back seat was female, which you rarely did, you'd say woman conductor or, condescendingly, lady conductor. I wonder whether Marin Alsop or Jane Glover would appreciate your referring to them as orchestral conductresses...

Things like "policeman" are so embedded that they're with us forever, and "policewoman" quite often signifies a slightly different community role, so those two entrenched words can at least claim to be functional. I've found that the jocular "lady policeman" goes down pretty well in the right context even with policewomen. We are allowed to lighten up as long as the intent is clear. But arrogantly clinging to things such as "actress" because you claim to be so thick that you can't work things out properly without it is ludicrous.

"The modern way of (say) using actor instead of actress is removing information."

Of course one of the uses of gender information was to encode gender discrimination: Waiters were hired for higher positions and paid more than waitresses. Poetesses and authoresses were diminutive versions of real poets and authors, who this linguistic opposition itself informed us were male.

When old farts die who currently insist on the distinction of difference in otherwise gender-neutral jobs, then some of the problem will go away. A lot of us have worked for a long time to take the diminutive titles out of jobs.

I was a park ranger - one day a woman asked me if I wasn't really a "rangerette." I looked her square in the eye when I answered that I was a ranger with the same responsibilities, skills, and pay as the male rangers in the service. And that the "ette" ending was insulting and shouldn't be used. She kind of slunk off after that, but it wouldn't have been a teachable moment if I'd politely accepted her assessment of what my role there was. I'm sure she went around after that telling her friends she met a bitchy female ranger. :-)

It matters, masculine and feminine - as in these languages: Albanian The neuter has almost disappeared. Akkadian Ancient Egyptian Amharic Arabic However, Arabic distinguishes masculine and feminine in the singular and the dual. In the plural it distinguishes between male humans, female humans and non-human plurals (including collectives of humans, such as "nation", "people", etc.); non-human plurals are treated as feminine singular regardless of their gender in the singular. Aramaic Breton (Brythonic) Catalan although it has the pronoun "ho" which substitutes antecedents with no gender, like a subordinate clause or a neuter demonstrative ("això", "allò"). For example: "vol això" (he wants this)-->"ho vol" (he wants it), or "ha promès que vindrà" (he has promised he will come)-->"ho ha promès" (he has promised it). Coptic Cornish (Brythonic) Corsican French Friulan Galician (with some remains of neuter in the demonstratives isto (this here), iso (this there/that here) and aquilo (that there), which can also be pronouns) Hebrew Hindi Irish (Goidelic) Italian There is a trace of the neuter in some nouns and personal pronouns. E.g.: singular l'uovo, il dito; plural le uova, le dita ('the egg(s)', 'the finger(s)'). Kurdish (only Northern dialect; Central or Southern dialects have lost grammatical gender) Ladin Latvian Lithuanian There is a neuter gender for all declinable parts of speech (most adjectives, pronouns, numerals, participles), except for nouns, but it has a very limited set of forms. Maltese Manx (Goidelic) Occitan Oromo language Pashto The neuter has almost disappeared. Portuguese There is a trace of the neuter in the demonstratives and some indefinite pronouns. Punjabi Romani Sardinian Scottish Gaelic (Goidelic) Sicilian Spanish There is a neuter of sorts, though generally expressed only with the definite article lo, used with adjectives denoting abstract categories: lo bueno. Tamazight (Berber) Urdu Venetian Welsh (Brythonic) Zazaki

Sorry to be rather crude, but whether someone serving me a meal in a restaurant has a willy or not doesn't cross my mind. As long as the food is as ordered, I'm quite content to call the server whatever they want me to call them!

This is quite interesting and pertinent - I've just consulted my husband about Malinke, and I'm amazed that the pronouns for 'him' and 'her' are the same word. Adjectives have no different forms when applied to either men or women. So gender neutral folk would be quite at ease in Ivory Coast!

It's a category confusion to equate grammatical gender with the sex of real-world referents. "Gender" in linguistics is a technical term for a form of adjective-noun agreement. (Compare genre = kind). It can be partially congruent with natural or cultural gender, but obviously never completely so, and the two are often at odds. Moreover, in some languages grammatical genders, e.g. concrete/abstract, have nothing to do with gender in the everyday sense.

So when we apply "gender-neutral" expressions to people, it has nothing whatsoever to do with grammatical gender (which is absent from English). It's not a question of grammatical morphology, but a question of the vocabulary we use to talk about real people. The presence or absence of a neuter grammatical gender in various languages is irrelevant to the issue of "gender-neutral" language.

When talking to someone pushing a baby in a pram why must you know what is under the nappy before you can compliment or ask about broken nights? I wondered this 50 years ago and wished there was a neutral singular personal pronoun. 'They' does sound odd - but so did 'Ms' back then.

I am a person first and the parts of my life when the fact that I am a woman matters is smaller.

As for Larks & Ravens that Mr Red objects to - well men often have less practise in dancing both roles, so in the long term it could lead to a generation of better dancers. But it might be hard for those of us with half a century or so of old habits. Many dance moves can be described without assuming anything. "Your partner is on your right, your corner on the left" - FALSE for half the dancers. "Men, you have your partner on the right, your corner on the left" - implies that the men lead, ladies do as told (or work it out in reverse). "You are standing between your partner and your corner" - true. "Men look on the right diagonal" - yes and so do the women.

I think (and I'm talking out of my ass here) the different terms for what is technically the same job is done to enforce the idea that "Hell, of COURSE women are a lesser species than men!"

This is also why the ignorant get the reaction they do. Same job, same title. Funny that there isn't a feminized version of "fuckwit", or "idiot", or "asshole". Maybe because those are male-only occupations?

I don't remember the name of the eatery, but I could find it again in Cambridge, Cambridge Massachusetts, if it is still there. One of the reasons is that they used the term 'waitron' for the walk-around order takers. Also, when I was a-growing, the word 'teacher' referred invariably to a female. I was very aware when changing from elementary to what we then called 'junior high' coincided with a bunch of teachers who were male. English is already gender neutral in not having nouns linked through grammer to gender. Once I was introduced to the Romance languages and the Slavic languages and the- pretty much any other language, I was heartily appreciative of my native tongue. It didn't seem to me that the use of actor versus actress was a problem. I personally think sex is something we are all aware of, and the use of -man in a non-sex generic sense meant no derogation of either sex. The use of the term 'policewoman' does not connote a lesser form of the term 'policeman' but someone I would rather have search a female relative or escort her to lockup. But, my opinion is only mine own. The world, particularly the hypercharged internet driven world, goes on, and everyone gets not get merely a say, but an instantaneous say.

"Interesting - according to that article, the battle was lost by the 12th century ... !"

I'm sorry, meself, I don't see the battle. I understand a plea for "gender-neutral language" to urge the use of language that is free from bias based on cultural or biological gender, not a plea to reform syntax.

Japanese, for example, is an astonishingly gender-biased language: There's even an entire subset of "women's speech." But Japanese has no grammatical gender.

When studying French or Italian, it's prudent to learn nouns with their definite articles, as well as their meaning, so that you memorize their gender at the same time. There's nothing corresponding to that in Japanese or English.

I don't know - maybe I missed your point: I thought you were arguing that the use of the term 'gender' is pertinent to grammar only, as opposed to actual sex identification (in the sense of male versus female). You know - the way it always used to say "sex" on forms, and now says "gender". That's the battle that's lost ....

No, I only meant that "gender" as we've been discussing it in this thread and "gender" as a property (or not) of a language are two different things. Likewise "neutral," the linguistic gender category and "neutral" the stance being debated here. Hence a catalog of languages and their gender structure has no bearing one way or the other.

(I'm just guessing, but I'm pretty sure the sociolinguistics professor who taught me this would come down on the opposite side from me on the issue of "gender-neutral language," though we'd agree that the language would find its own way, regardless of our opinions.)

I have nothing against terms such as "actor" and "waiter" being used in a gender-inclusive sense. I find it curious though that this should be encouraged, when elsewhere the word "man" is opposed as sexist, even when used in its gender-inclusive sense.

A question for the linguists: I know Latin has different words, homo and vir, for Man as opposed to (other) animal and Man as opposed to woman or child, but is this distinction found in many other languages?

"All languages presumably have a word distinguishing humans from beasts, and one distinguishing male humans from female ones. In what languages besides English can the same word be used for both distinctions?"

I would guess other Germanic languages and the Romance languages (e.g. "homme,"'"uomo," "hombre"), and Greek ("aner," "anthropos") also use this homonym. I have no idea how far back towards Indo-European this goes.

For example, Japanese has "ningen" (human-kind) for humanity; "dansei" (male sex) and "josei" (female sex) for man and woman. There's no sense of synonymity between "ningen" and "dansei." And of course in English we don't necessarily use "man" or "mankind" to distinguish ourselves from beasts.

I think here again we have the interplay of grammatical gender and cultural assumptions. (I'm assuming that "homo" is of masculine grammatical gender.) And for thousands of years the European pontificators of humanity's place in the universe have been mostly male, and many of them to varying degrees have seen women as not quite or incompletely human.

Some of this thread has given me hope for the future, and some has very much disappointed me. For most of my life I was untouched by such things, but when my eldest (at 30) decided they'd be healthier and happier as a recognized agender person, all I could feel was the matter was their choice and it wouldn't change the way I love them, it's still unconditional and profound. Every family member has accepted them and their choices. Even the discussion around a name change has gone very well.

The only way I am hurt is when I see the hurt in their eye and hear it in their voice when they suffer the slings and arrows from the bigoted world, and I am unable to offer protection.

I'm still liable to slip on pronouns, but that's my problem and I'm working on it, so far I am forgiven for my mishaps.

Many years ago I read and enjoyed Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness." I do not remember the details but I remember being thoroughly impressed. It's about a planet of who are not sexually arrayed as the humans we know and love. Maybe it's time for a re-read if for nothing else to honor the very recent passing of its author.

My attitude is that acknowledging the sex of a person is not to rate that person as greater or lesser, but to take note of their attributes. How we take such note I used to think is more important than simply ignoring it. But maybe that is no longer the case, for the time being, as we wrestle with its significance. I remember a well-known movie about a male lawyer and his female wife, also a lawyer. They go into a trial against each other. The movie is full of wit and humor, AND IGNORES NOTHING. The actors who portrayed the husband-wife pair were lovers, though not married, at least not to each-other. My memory is that the American movie ended with the words "Vive la difference!"

We have brains that are perfectly capable of processing contextual information

misses the point entirely. We have brains that can phrase properly. But this parish is witness to the inevitability that people don't. And there is a responsibility on the teller and the receiver to understand. And comics like the Sun bear witness, in extremis, to the fact that it doesn't always happen. Brevity leads to stupidity. Wordiness (put yer hand up then) leads to fatigue. People are lazy, people suffer confirmation bias, and don't spend the time analysing, even if the teller is precise.

Like hospital beds, or London ambulance telephone service. Redundancy is not waste, it is insurance. Pick your level, and it won't be enough - you just gamble, and take the hit rarely. Or too often if you skimp.

The reason English is so useful (apart from it being fairly ubiquitous) is the fact that we have a larger lexicon than (say) French.

Er, Mr Red, whilst your use of English is beyond reproach, you do write in a manner that gives us (me, anyway) a fair amount of mental processing to do at times. I find it odd that you can demur at a simple and painless thing such as dropping the sexist word "actress" yet revel in producing writing that is scarcely yea yea, nay nay. An observation, not a criticism.

'I have nothing against terms such as "actor" and "waiter" being used in a gender-inclusive sense. I find it curious though that this should be encouraged, when elsewhere the word "man" is opposed as sexist, even when used in its gender-inclusive sense'

You know, I thought I was the only one on earth who found that ironic (along the lines of "guys" used for females coming at the time it did). But no doubt we will be enlightened in short order.

Back aways, last century, I lived in a part of University Campus where we had some large buildings, Row Houses we called them, because they were on a street named 'Row', which had been for fraternities but after the frats had abandoned them, or gone defunct, these Row Houses were tenanted on a theme. Mine was international, named after onetime U.N. Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld, I was one of 4 Yanks out of 26 live-ins. Another was Androgyny House, which was based on, youguessedit, exploring the commonality between the (human) sexes. I can't be more explicit because I didn't live there. But as for MY house, we had unisex showers and bathrooms.

Oh, another blast from the previous millenium, but thread related, I swear!

King Missile: Detachable Penis I woke up this morning with a bad hangover And my penis was missing again. This happens all the time. It's detachable. This comes in handy a lot of the time. I can leave it home, when I think it's gonna get me in trouble, Or I can rent it out, when I don't need it. But now and then I go to a party, get drunk, And the next morning I can't for the life of me Remember what I did with it. First I looked around my apartment, and I couldn't find it. So I called up the place where the party was, They hadn't seen it either. I asked them to check the medicine cabinet 'Cause for some reason I leave it there sometimes But not this time. So I told them if it pops up to let me know. I called a few people who were at the party, But they were no help either. I was starting to get desperate. I really don't like being without my penis for too long. It makes me feel like less of a man, And I really hate having to sit down every time I take a leak. After a few hours of searching the house, And calling everyone I could think of, I was starting to get very depressed, So I went to the Kiev, and ate breakfast. Then, as I walked down Second Avenue towards St. Mark's Place, Where all those people sell used books and other junk on the street, I saw my penis lying on a blanket Next to a broken toaster oven. Some guy was selling it. I had to buy it off him. He wanted twenty-two bucks, but I talked him down to seventeen. I took it home, washed it off, And put it back on. I was happy again. Complete. People sometimes tell me I should get it permanently attached, But I don't know. Even though sometimes it's a pain in the ass, I like having a detachable penis. Songwriters: Chris Xefos / Dave Rick / John S. Hall / Roger Murdock Detachable Penis lyrics ? Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

This is all so very interesting to me. One thing I've always pondered is the pantomime Dame. I absolutely adore pantomime, and the Dame is the best thing in it. But why should it be even funnier because a man is playing the part of a woman? Why would it be much less funny if that role was played by a lady? The fact it's a man in the outrageous costume is a scream. But why is that?

We need to choose a new chairperson - sensible in a mixed-gender club.

We need to select a new chairman - wrong in a mixed-gender club.

Mrs Smith is our new chairman - ludicrous but I've seen it done.

Mankind - OK with me as it's so entrenched. I feel the same about policeman and policewoman. Policeperson would be very silly. Police officer might be a copout as a description of any given policeman or policewoman. It would make sense in most contexts.

Humankind - also fine. Use it as much as you can and it just might supplant "mankind." But why try to force it? In spite of received wisdom peddled by homophobes, no-one forced "gay" on us. Its usage simply evolved. Just nudges are what's needed. Humankind is an unobjectionable and nice-sounding word.

I like nice-sounding words. Mellifluous and helicopter are nice-sounding words.

The English Hymnal revised version has tried to change the words of some of our much-loved hymns and carols to make them more inclusive, and I have now to confess that it makes me absolutely fume. For example:-

'Good Christian men rejoice' With heart and soul and voice' is now:-

'Good Christian friends rejoice' Gaaaaaah!!!

And of all the hymns to change, what about Hark the Herald Angels Sing? Instead of '..born to raise the sons of Earth' we have '..born to raise each child of Earth' Gaaaaaah again!!!!!

I'm sorry, but for decades I've sung the CORRECT words to these ancient and beautiful hymns, and I will not co-operate at all. I loudly sing the original format, and so do most of the congregation.

'"use of the word man instead of homo sapiens or human race is sexist"

Can a man or lady reach a higher level of absolute stupidity?????'

Except that it's a fact of history. Among the historical "rights of man" has been the right to head the household, subjugate the women and children, and control the disposition of its property. This was defended, no not defended, assumed, by a political theorist as "enlightened" as John Locke.

We can see the sexism at work in the American Declaration of Independence: "All men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Sounds like "men" refers to "humanity," doesn't it? (Well, except for slaves.) But women's property rights were restricted, their right to vote was not guaranteed until about 150 years later, and it was almost 200 years (1964) later that discrimination on the basis of sex was made illegal.

Throughout the history of Europe, women were restricted from positions of power in the family, the church, the government, and the economy. Unlike men, they were not "made in the image of God." Their secondary status as "mankind" was self-evident: they didn't have a penis. Historically, the "ambiguity" of "man" as alternately "human" or "male human" isn't quite as ambiguous as we make it out to be. I can readily see why feminists are averse to it.

I think that when we find an innovation suggested by an oppressed class to be "ironic" or "ridiculous," it's a good idea to look for reasons that might not be apparent from a position of privilege. Generally, in unequal social relations, it's the underdogs who have a better understanding of them, because they are the ones who have to pay the closest attention. It's easy to see this looking back at earlier times, perhaps not so much in our own.

I don't mean to suggest that the problem of male privilege is purely a linguistic one, or that those agitating for reform think so. But the historically deep encoding of sexism in our language does contribute to it.

'"use of the word man instead of homo sapiens or human race is sexist"

NO IT ABSOLUTELY IS NOT!!!!

It is a refusal to differentiate between two meanings of the same word. Yes, two different meanings - as is shown by the fact that some languages have different words for them (see my earlier post), and you'd get no points for using the wrong one. In this respect the word "man" is no different from any other word which has more than one possible meaning. Granted, in this case there is an added complication that one meaning actually includes the other - as for example does "day", which can mean either a period of 24 hours, or "day" as opposed to "night". If I said a week is seven days, not seven days and seven nights, would you say I was discriminating against the hours of darkness, and call me a lucist?

Sorry to get hot under the collar about this, but I contend that there is no excuse for wilful ignorance of something that is, let's face it, PRIMARY SCHOOL stuff. At least, it was when I was at primary school.

BobL, I don't believe that people who call the "use" of the term "man" for "humanity" sexist weren't paying attention in primary school and are unaware of its double meaning--or that they feel that every use of it has a sexist purpose. I believe they feel, and I think rightly so, that this ambiguity has a history of exploitation for sexist purposes.

Usually when a set is denominated by a term that also denominates a subset, that subset is the dominant one--as your example of "day" indicates. We describe a week as "seven days"--although we could use "seven nights"--because the daylight hours are the important ones, and the nights are just there to keep the days apart. In that sense, it is "lucist."

It is the historical usage of the term "man" that explains why the same people who oppose it simultaneously support the extension of, say, "author" to include females, even though the semantics are similar. The use of "author" to denominate both males and females does not have a sexist history. On the contrary, it is the opposition of the pair "author/authoress" that does.

I used to feel as you do. Further, I maintained that suffixal -man, pronounced (roughly) "mun," as in "postman"--or "woman"--was an etymologically different morpheme from stand-alone "man."

I came to feel that these distinctions weren't relevant to the issue of sexist language, while their history as part of a sexist language system was.

The whole trend of "pick your pronouns" hit me upside the head with astonishment when I had a friend who chairs a (very) liberal college's Psychology Department detail how their school works it out. Oberlin is a place that is, and has been, very friendly to all sorts of people to whom gender and expressions of it, have been fluid. Gay, cross-dressing, bi, trans, queer, whatever the classification of one's identification with gender or sexual preference, ways have been found to make folks feel safe and comfortable. That's what it really is about, isn't it? Dealing with our fellow humans in a way that respects who they are, and who they strive to be.

What gobsmacked me is how freaking complicated it can be. The younger generation has substantially less problem with sorting it out, and as others have commented, for older folks the years of language being "binary" are deeply imprinted. I remember being annoyed that I was to be referred to as "cisgender female" - being "female" was just NORMAL to me. What continues to be problematic for me is how, without that male/female choice of identifiers, you somehow need to know more about a stranger's personal life than perhaps you want to.

I've had no problem with pronouns for several trans friends over the years, but likely because they have also been binary in their choice of pronoun. The rest of the "queer" and "fluid gender" spectrum are a mystery to me entire. This does not impact my life in any way, so I tend to not want to deal with it

whoops - that last post went off before proofing or finishing the thought: it is disconcerting to have to consider a stranger's gender or sex life in just having a term to refer to them. "Gender neutral" pronouns are an easy out for this - and is more comforting a concept for me.

Last night I heard a report on I believe "As It Happens" that "O Canada" is subject to revision because its lyrics invoke 'sons' so this is to be ungenderized (degenderized). The interviewee wouldn't touch the French version.

This morning listening to the gender culture wars discussed on the radio show "This American Life" the subject of sex education came up and certain parties are objecting to 'male' and 'female' because this does not include those who have equipment that they do not identify with, hence the suggestion 'penis owner' and 'vagina owner'. I was transfixed at the program. I regard it not so much in a scandalized manner as with fascination how we are parsing out issues we have long thought to be well understood but apparently not so much.

Tonight going to see a movie called "The Women's Balcony" which plays out to certain issues within the Jewish Community (or maybe between Jewish Communities) but I can't speak to it yet as I have neither seen it nor got a description in detail on it.

But I was kind of fond of "their," as it could mean the gay man's room, or the transgendered lesbian's, if that's either's pronoun of preference--or both in any case.

Jim: "How many more revelations will it take to make the eejits realise that "perversion" exists only in the eye of the beholder?"

Jim, I hope I clarified that the poem was a celebration of "perversion." Compare "polymorphous perversity," " the ability to find erotic pleasure in all parts of the body." But like the second line, it could have been done better.

OK, a few points: If you sit down, all toilets are gender-neutral. Also, when I was younger, metrosexual only applied to men who seemed gay (by the straight stereotypes of gays, mostly caring about their own appearance) but weren't. And third, when I came out as non-gendered/binary a couple of years ago, I only had to do it with my Anglophone friends; in French I can be as male as a chin or as female as a table, doesn't apply to me, don't matter. In English, though, I really dislike being referred to in the third person with a gendered pronoun. Either of them.

I think I told this story, that the total rando stranger I shared a cabin with on the Star Trek cruise used They in the third person when referring to me, and did it so naturally that I almost jumped in with Wait, no, that was me, who are you talking about? So I guess I better get used to my own preferences!

Also (small digression) in Hungarian, like Malinke, there is no gender; Hungarians don't usually use pronouns at all as the verbs are conjugated, but they have them for stress and emphasis purposes, and there is only "third person singular" - not He or She. Or him or her. There are words for things which have gender, like man and woman, mother and father; further digression, they have no word for brother or sister because you have to specify whether your sib is older or younger. So they have older bro, younger bro, older sis, younger sis, twin, and sibling, but no just plain brother or sister.

The use of "perverted" bothers me too. It just comes across to my ear as insulting, and I don't have a horse in that particular race. But I know plenty of folks who would either take, or intend, offense by that word. Following on from Nigel, how about:

A cisgender gay man named Broome And a lesbian trans took a room. They frolicked all night In uncensored delight, Which shows you should never assume.

The North Korean cheerleading squad, which will perform at the Winter Olympics opening ceremonies, this Friday, in Pyeongchang, South Korea, occupies its own stratosphere of weaponized comeliness and discipline. The squad, which has been dubbed, in South Korea, the ?army of beauties,? presents a doll-house version of military service: girls in their late teens and early twenties are plucked from the country?s most prestigious universities and charged with making North Korea look good. The cheerleaders are chosen on the basis of appearance and ideology?they undergo background checks, to insure that there are no defectors or enemy sympathizers in their families, and they must be pretty (and at least five feet three)

Word meanings evolve over time, to reflect the changing societies they serve. I don't see why we couldn't keep He and She, but expand their definitions, so that "he" indicates anyone born or currently identifying as male, and "she" signifies the same for females. For those who are on the border or prefer not to be classified, say "they" and its related forms. Theirself and Themself may take some getting used to, but it feels natural.

The lack of a singular neuter-gender pronoun for humans has always been a headache for writers, in a million ways unrelated to political correctness. So much so that "they" is becoming acceptable whether one is speaking of a group or an individual. Word-nerd that I am, the grammar still jars on my ear a bit - but not as much as the verbal hoops authors sometimes jump through to avoid the issue.

I would like us to [be allowed to] go on using He, She, and They - but in awareness of their increased field of interpretation.

"They" as a gender-neutral singular has been used in English for at least 800 years. I don't see a problem with it, along with related words such as "them" or "their." I do see a problem with using "he" for everybody, and I'm not thinking of filling my prose with loads of "he or she"-type constructions. English is a noble and mighty language and we don't need to be bolting on clumsy and awkward things like that.

So is this why English sovereigns refers to themselves as "We"? Is this just an example of preternatural gender fairness, or a pluralism of 'we' all English sovereigns through time? Was Henry VIII's codpiece just a personal affectation? Maybe Elizabeth had one under all that upholstery?

I think it's good if language can be gender-neutral. Language that expresses preference for the male gender, subtly indicated that the male gender is thought to be superior.

But I don't think people can be gender-neutral. People who call themselves "non-binary" have their own place somewhere in the spectrum, but they are most definitely not "neutral." The word "non-binary" does sound awkward, but it's the best term I've heard so far. It will take time to develop language that works without being awkward.

I do think the language police will need to settle for three categories, especially since one is neutral. A new invented pronoun for every single mathematical permutation is going to be greeted with resistance & resentment, and will just wind up being more divisive than ever.

I find "non-binary" so clunky and jargon-ish that I can't see it being widely adopted either. And "tripartite" isn't much better, I know. (Threefold? It's more poetic anyway.)

In the end, it's up to each person to decide - or discover - for themself where their pronoun preference lies.

Non-binary is ridiculous. Binary relates to being in either one state or another. By that measure, as a full-blown bloke (I think) I'm non-binary. I'd have thought that people who define themselves as transgender have far more claim to be binary. Still, if it catches on it'll become standard English and that'll be that. Or this and that.

Um, if men and women are the only possible categories, the category (not the men, nor the women) is binary. If you do not indentify as either of those possibilities, or as both at the same time, then nonbinary is the only available term.

It is a lot easier to re-purpose an existing word than to invent a new one. "You" used to be the plural in English when "thee" was the singular, now You is both plural and singular and "thee" is obsolete (unless you're Quaker). So "they" becoming a singular pronoun in English is easy, and is already happening anyway.

Steve Shaw and my darlin' Bonnie Shaljean, what existing term do you think could be repurposed to mean nonbinary? That is, would be better than nonbinary?

I agree that nonbinary is clunky and promotes the idea of binarity, if that's the word. But I don't feel Universal or Inclusive, I feel as if I were neither male nor female according to the usual definitions, or male on one side and female on the other (sides being inside and outside, not left and right), so neither or both is more "right" for me. I am neither cis nor trans, in that while I definitely do not identify as the sex assigned to me at birth by the appearance of my genitals, I do not indentify completely as the "other" one either.

I am reminded of the term Atheist for someone without god beliefs, which includes the theism we reject right there in the word. But "freethinker" to me seems PC and prettified, and I wish the hoodoo could come off the word Atheist. But I would like a PC and prettified term for Nonbinary if it was as nice. Gender-free? Still uses gender. Hmmm. Ideas?

There was an interesting programme on BBC Radio 4 at 4 o'clock this afternoon called Word Of Mouth which examined the issue of language and gender identity. It was very interesting so if you can access it it's well worth a listen.